The original Dark Souls was one of those really unforgiving games that takes real player skill to complete, not a quick trigger finger and a quick-load key, which makes its popularity somewhat surprising. However popular it is, which is why there's likely to be a lot of people excited about the sequel and therefore doubly excited to see the nine minutes of footage we have below.
In it you'll see the protagonist battle his way past the same hell hounds and cape wearing, mummy... guy sometimes successfully, sometimes not, but each time it's different and it also means we get to see that the soul gathering system from the previous game is still present, that the gameplay is still tough and relentless and it's still very grey and brown.
There's also some added destructibility to the environments, with the aforementioned mummy face enemy repeatedly smashing down his lovingly constructed wooden tower again and again.
Later in the video though, we get our look at some more open areas, where a much lower level player is forced to face off against a nasty white knight, who's far less nice than the ones you encounter on the internet. In-fact this one guts him again and again while archers spitefully pepper him with arrows from the sidelines.
Dark Souls II is set for release in early March on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.